Fifteen years ago, men suffering from impotence found a beacon of hope in a little blue pill. Its debut marked a turning point in pharmaceutical marketing and sexual attitudes.
Pfizer’s sanitized medical campaign turned male sexual insecurity into a profitable new market. This has reshaped notions of masculinity to the point where self-worth is now a function of supercharged sexual performance.
Sexuality
Sexuality is a crucial part of being human and continues throughout people’s lives. It is shaped by the messages we receive from the media, our parents, and our own experiences. It also is influenced by our culture, beliefs, and world views. For clinicians, it is important to consider how culture influences a person’s view of their sexuality and their treatment of sexual dysfunction.
One of the most profound implications of the Viagra Malaysia phenomenon is that it has changed how sex is perceived and practiced. It has undermined the idea that there are certain innate biological drives and an unchanging sexual order. The fact that women are just as likely to take the drug as men has further undermined traditional ideas of gender identity. This has contributed to the emergence of new forms of disorder, such as sexual dysphoria and gender identity disorders.
It has also helped to create a ‘pill for everything’ culture, whereby it is normal to treat problems like erectile dysfunction with a pill. This has led to a reduction in the importance that researchers place on understanding the causes of sexual problems. It is a significant step backward from the previous century’s research, which emphasized the need to examine the relationship between physiology and culture.
The role of culture is critical in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual problems, particularly in heterosexual couples. It influences the frequency of symptoms, how they are presented to professionals, and how they are categorized. It may even have a pathofacilitative effect, whereby certain behaviors that are not culturally appropriate for the population at large, such as premature ejaculation, become medicalized and diagnosed as psychiatric or somatic conditions.
It can also have a pathoelaborative effect, whereby universal behaviors are accentuated to the point of being considered abnormal and therefore in need of medical treatment (Reference Bhugra and CordleBhugra 1986). These factors must be taken into account in the development of diagnostic criteria for conditions such as sexual dysfunction. This is an area where further work is needed, in particular about acculturation and how this relates to the frequency of specific symptoms and how they are presented to professionals.
Masculinity
For men, the little blue pill has reshaped their ideas about the body and sexual pleasure. It’s a drug that has become a symbol of masculinity, a pharmaceutical that’s promoted in the pages of men’s magazines and the TV shows men watch. It’s a symbol of a culture that values quick fixes and pills for everything from heart problems to erections.
In this book, Meika Loe considers the history of Viagra and its vast social implications. She interviews people who take the drug, their wives, doctors, and pharmacists, as well as scientists involved in research and development. She looks at the search for a female Viagra, the rise of new erection drugs, and the multi-billion dollar industry that has grown up around them, and she explores how the medicalization of sex and erection issues have changed what qualifies as normal sex.
The sex health of boys and young men is complex and intersects with broader constructions of masculinity, gender relations, mental well-being, and help-seeking practices. These are often shaped by gendered norms and expectations, which vary across social contexts. A limited body of research has examined the relationship between ideas about masculinity and sex-related health outcomes.
During adolescence, boys and young men may be socialized to embody a particular masculine identity as a means of demonstrating their ‘manliness’ and separating themselves from femininity (Connell, 1995). This masculine ideal can lead to boys and young men experiencing increased pressure to defend their perceived or actual masculinity and avoid challenges to it.
As a result, many are reluctant to seek help when they experience sexual or emotional difficulties, which can contribute to poor mental health and substance misuse. To counter this, it’s important to understand how ideas about masculinity shape help-seeking and health-promoting behavior. However, to date, there has been a limited body of qualitative research on this topic in South Asia. This study is the first to explore how masculinities shape men’s views of erectile dysfunction and its treatment. The narratives of 30 men, aged 18 to 64 from two different socioeconomic backgrounds in Bangladesh were analysed.
Health
Fifteen years after it was first marketed, Viagra is now the world’s most successful drug ever. But what does this blue pill mean for the future of health and the way we think about our bodies? A new book explores the cultural impact of Viagra. It reveals how a pharmaceutical company turned sexual insecurity into a lucrative business by changing the language of disease and turning the condition known as erectile dysfunction into a ‘symptom’ that requires expensive treatment.
In a society that has become increasingly globalized, the line between ‘ordinary’ life and ‘treatable illness’ is becoming blurred. As a result, we have seen the emergence of an unprecedented class of ‘new medical conditions’. These include a wide range of symptoms that are now routinely screened for and diagnosed in clinics across the world. Among them are sexual problems such as loss of desire, genital pain, and premature ejaculation. These ‘new’ illnesses are being transformed from private, personal matters into a public health problem and the subject of major campaigns.
Prevalence and patterns of help-seeking for these disorders differ between cultures. This is perhaps most pronounced in cases where the cultural beliefs surrounding sex, sexual functioning, and disorder are not aligned with the medical models of illness used by clinicians.
These differences have important implications for clinical practice. Formulations that locate a problem within two individuals rather than in a couple and the mind-body relationship may be problematic for clinicians working with non-Western patients, particularly those with complex family structures. It is also important to recognize that the occurrence of some sexual symptoms, such as a loss of desire and genital pain, or a culture-bound syndrome such as koro (genital retraction) in Asian men, cannot be assumed to be normal.
The book’s discussion of these issues will be of interest to anthropologists and ethnographers, but it is likely to have a wider influence. As the use of standardized case-finding instruments becomes increasingly widespread, it will be crucial to understand the influences that shape these cultural formulations. In addition, clinicians working with patients from different cultures need to be aware that these cultural influences will also shape how these problems are understood by their patients.
Medicine
Although epidemiological data are sparse, sexual dysfunction will likely vary by culture. This may influence prevalences as well as pathways into care and patterns of help-seeking behavior. Clinicians, whether in specialist or general services, need to consider the impact of culture in assessing and treating patients with sexual problems.Mala
Using interviews with men who take Kamagra Malaysia, their wives, doctors and pharmacists as well as experts in the field, Loe shows how the little blue pill has changed sex in America. She looks at the controversy over erectile dysfunction as a medical condition, the quest for a female Viagra, and the rise of new erection drugs. She also explores the way that sex has become a global commodity and how the sex industry is changing the world’s understanding of the body and the mind-body relationship.
The debate over whether sexual dysfunction should be classed as a medical condition is not easily resolved. The line between ordinary life and treatable illness is being blurred by the huge amount of money that is spent on advertising. Furthermore, marketing departments are deliberately blurring the distinction between a pill for a sexual problem and a pill for pleasure.
In the West, the concept of a biologically innate sex drive that culminates in orgasm has been promoted by medicine and a culture that is prone to ethnic and racial stereotyping. However, this idea is not supported by any clinical studies. Rather, it appears to be the result of a historical process in Western thinking and is an example of what Reference Davis calls ‘biological essentialism’.
Research into sexual problems in different parts of the world is contradictory, largely because of differences in research design and methodology. The use of standardized case-finding instruments and comparing outcomes across cultures is problematic. Moreover, applying Western categories to other cultural settings risks committing what Reference Kleinman Kleinman (1987) describes as a category fallacy.
While single-country studies have established that certain sexual difficulties are common in some populations, such as erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation in Kumasi, Ghana (Reference Amidu, Owiredu and Gyasi-SarpongAmidu 2003), research on prevalences of disorders such as vaginismus and anorgasmia among women in other regions of the world is more mixed.
